Hacker News Viewer

PGSimCity - How PostgreSQL Works

by jonbaer on 7/27/2026, 12:19:04 AM

https://nikolays.github.io/PGSimCity/

Comments

by: layoric

I love what is trying to be done here. Some feedback to improve would be to cut out a lot of the noise with the &quot;Take tour&quot;. There are too many boxes and things changing on the screen to get a sense of what is happening. Also make it interactive rather than automatically switch onto the next subject. Being a passive observer to so much information trying to be conveyed is very confusing.<p>I really do like these kinds of approaches to showing the inner workings of different kinds of tech, so think this is on the good path to being a very useful tool, but needs some focus rather than more data&#x2F;graphs&#x2F;info boxes.

7/27/2026, 1:21:29 AM


by: arjie

I can&#x27;t believe &quot;Rendering The First Frame...&quot; is not &quot;Reticulating Splines...&quot; :)<p>Cool UI.

7/27/2026, 2:06:14 AM


by: Curtis_Guan

Understanding how scheduling works inside a database used to require numerous architecture diagrams to explain. I was amazed when I saw PGSimCity — it presents such a complex technical implementation process in such an engaging way. Since it&#x27;s already open‑source, I think the same idea can be reused in other domains, such as cloud computing, Kubernetes, and so on.

7/27/2026, 1:27:55 AM


by: narmiouh

I imagined as soon I saw the initial visual that I would somehow be able to enter a query and it would walk me through the flow through the entire system starting from input parsing to all the way to delivering output and perhaps along the way understand some of the autonomous processes that happen in parallel that aren&#x27;t query specific but run constantly.<p>What others are saying - fantastic attempt, but don&#x27;t know where to start or where to end.

7/27/2026, 1:28:04 AM


by: skreem

This is really cool, I like having visualization to hold on my head!<p>Also (assuming this is LLM-generated, apologies if it’s not) seems like the future of learning&#x2F;self-teaching… gonna try and generate similar things for stuff I’m learning

7/27/2026, 1:21:51 AM


by: loveparade

I don&#x27;t know what I am looking at but it is fabulous.

7/27/2026, 1:18:40 AM


by: npunt

This is very cool, just some UX tips to make it more legible:<p>1. remove ~50% of the UI since it covers too much of a laptop screen<p>2. improve the camera controls so its easier to pan and zoom.

7/27/2026, 1:42:43 AM


by: BowBun

Amazing, great work. Keep polishing this up!

7/27/2026, 1:44:08 AM


by: deadbabe

Someone should make a movie called “Postgres” which is about people living within a Postgres city, in the style of Se7en.<p>“Every city has secrets. Ours have indexes.”

7/27/2026, 1:48:11 AM


by: abstrct

This is amazing!

7/27/2026, 1:51:00 AM


by: npl

Love this

7/27/2026, 1:25:34 AM


by: bibimsz

i understood all that.

7/27/2026, 1:45:19 AM